5 Time-Saving Sewing Hacks
When I first began my quest to sew within a busy lifestyle, I broke down and purchased one of those semi-expensive sewing project kits from my local craft store. I thought: Yes! No more fighting pattern pieces or cutting fabrics, I can get right to the fun of actually sewing!
Oh, how wrong I was. Do you know that they charge you more for these kits than if you were to pick out your own fabrics for the project, and the freaking fabrics aren't even pre-cut? This was a huge disappointment to me, as I had lived my whole life thinking that the kits were more spendy because the fabrics were all pre-cut.
When I discovered that my problem wasn't going to be so easily fixed, I set out on a journey to find the best ways to enable myself to craft and sew within my busy lifestyle!
(And I built a company that creates and sells pre-cut kits. Yup, you read that right!) Check out some of the cool things we create by clicking here>>
Below, I have detailed out the top 5 time-saving sewing hacks that I have discovered; they really should help!
1. Ditch the confusing, time-wasting patterns! Now, I am not saying that all patterns suck. But if you have been sewing very long at all, you cringe with me at the thought of all the weird and extra steps that some major sewing pattern brands include in their pattern instructions.
Sign up to our email list and stay informed on new, easy sewing patterns that we release. All of these patterns have been personally tested and redesigned by me, allowing for minimal steps and ease of creation!
2. Cutting fabric and materials can be SO tedious! Rather than waste so much time cutting, cleaning up fabric scraps, and re-folding pattern pieces, plan a time to cut all the materials for your next few projects. This will definitely save clean-up time in the long run.
Keep some Tupperware on-hand in your craft room; masking tape and a marker can be used to write the project name on the lid. Then, you can put all of the pieces for each project into its own individual sandwich box, along with any pattern pieces or instructions that may go with it.
If you really just don't want to fuss with cutting materials, learn more about our Pre-Cut Sewing Kits>> that come in our monthly sewing club shipments.
3. Chain Piece. What the heck is this, you ask?
This is a little tidbit that I stole from the quilting community; basically, you do not stop to trim threads between every piece that you sew.
That sounds like a huge mess, but watch this video and you will understand what I mean!
In this tutorial, she is demonstrating with some plain, square fabric pieces. You can do this technique with oddly-shaped fabric pieces as well.
This will also trim clean-up time, as you don't have as many threads to vacuum up.
4. Speaking of Vacuums... If you are like me (you may not be like me), I just toss my thread trimmings on my carpet floor. This saves me time and also I don't have an extra garbage can for my sewing studio.
However, when it comes to vacuuming those long, pesky pieces of thread out of the carpet... Well, after awhile the spinner inside the vacuum gets so entwined with thread that it won't spin anymore and then you have to take an hour and a half to cut the threads off of the stupid thing.
Here is what I learned: just use the vacuum hose! Everyone advises not to vacuum thread at all, but just make sure that when you toss your thread pieces onto the ground, they are all in one area by your sewing machine. Then, as you vacuum, when you get to that spot, just pop the hose out and suck up all the threads!
This way, they bypass the spinner thing, don't get stuck, and the vacuuming is still super speedy!
5. To clean or not to clean? Not! Cleanup is a horrible time-consumer. If you have a separate sewing room with a door, just make sure that you keep the area near the door clean so that you can get the door closed--problem solved!
For those of us that cannot close off our craft room and that regularly have visitors, schedule those visitors for only one or two days during the week. This gives you 5 days of uninterrupted crafting and creativity, then you can just clean one time for those two days that it needs to be clean.
This may sound super silly, but I can definitely tell that it has allowed me to get much more done in a week!
Need some more help with time-saving sewing?
Check out the Sew What Box sewing club. Each month, receive a package filled with pre-cut sewing projects, new sewing tools, and sewing tips and tricks! PLUS... Get a new sewing pattern and easy-to-follow tutorials each month.
The projects in all of our shipments are fun, useful, and don't take long to complete.